Acolyte. Poems by Jackson Gordon Brannon
36 pages, $10
Publication Date: 2010

Acolyte
Once my father made a calculated effort
to spare me the fate of those shy and effete,
took me along to the college campus
where he ministered to men’s men, a healer
to Saturday’s warriors, that I might
be raised in the company of athletes
to marvel and admire the achievements
of young gods on the gridiron.
One sweltering September night
before an altar limed with boundary lines
and seventy thousand celebrants,
someone hands me a thin white towel
shouting, Wipe ‘em down good, son,
soon as they come off the field,
they’re sweatin’ like warthogs tonight!
…What if they don’t want me to…?
A sissy boy would never be rude.
Don’t worry, kid, just wipe ‘em off,
they’ll be grateful for your help.
I move in a daze along the bench-line
as each helmeted host pours off the field,
shuffle from one seraph to the next,
watching for the moment
between spits and hollering whoops
when I can make oblation
with the offer of a trembling towel.
One by one I serve the idols
amid the terrible din of the temple.
I wipe the towel across each face,
then down their massively muscled arms
in the grip of a sacramental trance,
soak up each, “Hey, kid, thanks,”
as I receive a holy manna
for which I have no name.
These drenched and flaming features,
pimply blotched terrain
smeared with muddy gore
beneath a dripping crown of butch-waxed hair,
these hallowed images endowed by time
and my father’s consecration,
loom vast and shining
in the museum of my childhood.

Jack Brannon, MFA, MEd, is the author of a book of poems, Vigil, and the director of Poetry at Round Top, an annual poetry festical co-sponsored by the Seton Cove. He has been a James A. Michener Fellow at the University of Texas, and his work has been published in a number of journals and anthologies. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

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